Mice and lice are not nice
by Nuredhel
Summary: Thranduil buys some sweet little pets for his son, not a good idea... On a trip to Imladris a Group of elves get stuck in an inn during a terrible storm, With a bunch of dwarves... chaos is guaranteed. humor/parody, silly and sweet. Thranduil/Legolas. Two Chapters. I do not own these characters, i just borrow them and play With them.
1. The stuffed mice three stuffed mice

Mice and lice are not nice

Chapter one: Why buying an elfling a pet is a bad idea.

The streets of Dale were buzzing with life, there were people everywhere and even some rather rare elves or dwarves. The market was so crowded those carrying stuff had problems getting through the dense mass of people and the noise was unbelievable. Some merchants were shouting to make the potential customers aware of their goods and they all tried to shout louder than their neighbor. It was a cacophony and the smells added to the whole experience and made it truly unforgettable. The mixed smells of food, perfume and manure mingled in a most peculiar way and you had to have a rather toughened nose not to become overwhelmed by it all.

A group of elves stood in a corner that was a bit more peaceful and less crowded than the rest of the marketplace, they all wore cloaks and looked as if they had travelled for a while, and they had. They came from Mirkwood and were there to trade and buy supplies, there was much they needed which they couldn't produce within the forest and once a year they would come to the great market to renew trading agreements and refill their supplies. Normally it was the king's butler Galion who had to go and make sure that everything was done the right way. Some of the merchants would try to trick even an elf if the opportunity presented itself and a pair of keen eyes and a mind used to dealing with less than honest people was needed.

The king had sent someone else one year, one of his advisors and the elf had ended up buying several barrels of wine that had turned to vinegar and some cloth that hadn't been properly dyed and left whoever wore it with blue skin for weeks. Thranduil didn't want that to happen again so he had given the important task to Galion who promptly reorganized the entire storage system of the palace not once but thrice just to make sure that they had everything under control and knew exactly how much they would need of everything from wheat to salt and wine. This time it was a bit different, the king himself had joined the group and he had brought his young son with him. The king had determined that it was about time that the lad saw the world of men for the first time and he had introduced the prince to the city in careful doses.

The young elf was still the equivalent to a five year old human, he was just the sweetest child anyone had seen and the humans had been beside themselves with awe and the prince had been showered with attention and gifts. The ladies at the market had given him enough sweets to cause the sugar high of all times and one aging man had even given the young elf a very nice little dagger. Legolas was naturally extremely enthusiastic about the trip and he had been nagging for months upon months about it, now that he was there he was a bit overwhelmed and at first he had hid behind his father holding his hand rather hard.

Huge blue eyes had stared at all the strange and unfamiliar things with both curiosity and a bit of fear, tbe humans were so noisy and they did stink. But they were nice though, they smiled at him and some even tried to pet his golden locks. He was safe when his ada was there, for nobody was as strong as his ada and more than that, his ada was the king and so everybody had to do what he said. Legolas had perhaps been a bit overprotected but he was loved by everybody and he was a trustful child, he soon forget his nervousness and got all excited. Thranduil had promised to buy him something nice and Legolas saw so many amazing things he really wanted.

They had looked at everything from clothes to small weapons and the elfling had huge problems with decisions, there was just too much to see there. They had been there for two days, Thranduil was negotiating a new treaty with some merchants from the south who could provide them with lots of valuable spices and medicinal herbs they were unable to grow within the woods. Thranduil had discovered that the sight of a beautiful child often softened the hearts of humans and so he had kept the elfling in the room when he was talking with the men and they had indeed melted and he had managed to get a very good deal indeed. He was in a very good mood as a result of this and now Legolas was scurrying around like a squirrel, staring at all the goods on display.

Suddenly Thranduil heard Legolas call out to him. "Ada, ada, look, look"

The excitement in the elfling's voice told him that this was something special and so he walked over to where his little son stood, jumping up and down and pointing. "Oh ada see, aren't they cute!?"

Both Thranduil and Legolas wore ordinary clothes, they looked like the average elf but everybody in Dale knew who Thranduil was and greeted him with the outmost respect and the salesman stood there with his nose almost touching the ground. Thranduil saw what Legolas had spotted, it was a cage and it was filled with some very small white mice with red eyes and soft fluffy fur. Yes, they were cute, terribly so but Thranduil had his doubts. Mice are after all not your average pets. "Ada, may I have one? Please? Oh please please, I promise I will be good for a whole yeni, I swear"

Thranduil was caught between a rock and a hard place, he didn't want to disappoint his son and at the same time he wasn't so sure that this was a good idea. The salesman smiled and bowed even deeper. "My lord, they are great pets for children, they do not bite and they are quite tame too. They do not require much care either, just some food and water and a good cage."

Legolas was staring at his father with the most adorable puppy eyes ever. "Oh ada, please, I promise I will look after it and feed it and love it and never do anything bad again."

Thranduil had to smirk, that would be the day mount Orodruin did freeze over, Legolas had a peculiar ability to cause trouble, it wasn't that the boy in any way was mean or meant to do anything wrong. No, things just happened around him, the last incident involved a serious blockage of the privies of the royal wing of the palace. The lad had explained it with his usual curiosity, he had tried to see if there was room for a pillow and a bag of flour inside of the bowl, needless to say it wasn't and the result was a very heavy flooding and some nasty stains the servants still were working on.

"Ion nin, they need a cage, and I do not think that this nice man has any cages now does he?"

Thranduil was crossing his fingers but he was disappointed when the man smiled. "Oh but I do have cages my lord, plenty. They are in my carriage, I can go get one if you like to see?"

Legolas was bouncing up and down, his eyes shining. "Yes, oh yes, I want to see!"

Thranduil sighed, rolled his eyes and fell into the very infamous parental trap of being to yielding to his child, he didn't want to see Legolas sad and after all, it was just mice wasn't it? The man went and came back with a cage, it was perhaps a meter tall, a meter wide and half a meter long and made from very dense netting, it looked as if it could hold some mice without any risk of them getting away. "See? This is excellent workmanship and it is after all very good for children to have pets, it teaches them responsibility."

Legolas was listening to the man with his mouth open in a silly looking grin and his son was so cute Thranduil couldn't help it, he gave in, or rather, his resistance crumbled like a rotten tree in a hurricane. "Alright Ion nin, but then you take care of it."

Legolas stared at the mice, he swallowed. "Uh…won't it miss its friends?"

His voice was a bit thin and the salesman smiled. "It is usual to buy two or more, because they are used to be a small group yes. "

Thranduil sighed, he had lost and he knew it. "Alright, fine, we'll have two but you'd better make darn sure they both are female."

The salesman nodded and opened the cage. "Of course my lord, now let us see."

He lifted up one small white mouse, its nose shivered and Legolas giggled with joy, it was such a wonderful sound and Thranduil felt how his heart swelled with love, he would do anything for his son, anything. Legolas reached out and let a finger slide across the small white body, very gently. "Oh ada, it is so soft"

There was awe in his voice and Thranduil smiled. "I am sure it is."

The salesman picked up yet another one and lifted the tail to check the plumbing before he dropped both mice into a travelling cage and Thranduil sighed. "How much?"

The salesman shook his head. "Oh no, it is for free, I am honored by this and I do not want any money. I can now proudly call myself provider of royal pets and that should boost my income a lot. I am very grateful."

Thranduil knew that he would insult the man if he tried to insist upon paying so he just placed his hand over his heart and bowed his head as a sign of respect. Legolas was beaming with joy and held the small travelling cage as if it contained the most precious of jewels. Thranduil stroked his sons golden locks lovingly. "Now, do you have a name for these two fluffy ones?"

Thranduil thought that the mice did look a lot like dust bunnies but he didn't say that loud, the mice were rather nice looking and he was glad his son had fallen for mice and not some horrible pet like a snake or a lizard or something, the very idea made him cringe. Legolas grinned from ear to ear. "Yes Ada, I will name them Ithil and Anor."

Thranduil just smiled. It was grand names for such tiny creatures but who cared, his son was happy and then Thranduil was happy too. They went back to the inn and Legolas immediately started to care for the two tiny creatures. It was rather adorable and Thranduil was glad his son had this affection for animals, it was a good character trait. The next day the trading was done and the elves returned to their woods, Legolas rode proudly upon his pony with the small cage with the mice strapped onto the back of the saddle and the large cage on one of the carriages and Thranduil was seeing the grin upon the faces of his servants. They found it really sweet that the prince was so happy with having gotten such a humble gift, two mice and a cage.

They got back to the palace and Legolas placed the cage within his own room. He got some rocks and sand and moss and straw and made the cage very homely and the mice soon made it their home and they thrived. The elfling was really fond of the two tiny ones and he did take great care of them. He would feed them with pieces of fruit and nuts and even some cheese and the mice lived a very comfortable life indeed. Legolas would let them climb all over him and he did take great care so that the tiny ones didn't get hurt in any way. Thranduil was in fact a bit surprised by the maturity the elfling showed and he was very proud of the young one's dedication and degree of care.

But alas, often things do come to an end and the end of the mouse business came one early morning in summer when Legolas got out of bed and to his horror discovered that the door to the cage had been left ajar the evening before. And the two spoiled mice had found the idea of freedom irresistible and were nowhere to be seen. Thranduil had to comfort a bawling elfling and the servants were looking all over the palace but there were no sign of the two mice. Often owls and other nocturnal creatures would go hunting at night and Thranduil feared that the two swiftly had been reduced to a fluffy snack for some hungry mouth.

Thranduil managed to calm Legolas down by promising him a new pony or perhaps even a fawn to play with and the elfling grieved his two small companions for a few weeks but then they were forgotten, a young heart heals fast and there were so many things for a young mind to explore and Legolas didn't linger with the loss.

Ithil and Anor hadn't fallen prey to some owl or ferret, no, they had followed a scent they knew and they had found their way through cracks and crevices and ended up in what had to be mouse heaven. Galion had reorganized the whole storage level of the palace, it was a huge area dedicated just to storing stuff and he had tried to make it more efficient. There were a few rooms at the back of the area that were abandoned as a result of this, they were too damp and the corridor leading to them was too narrow and so they went out of use.

But the butler had done a mistake, one of the rooms had been used to store and prepare cheese, one of king Oropher's closest friends had a peculiar hobby, he made cheese and he had been allowed to use the room to make the cheese mature in a perfect environment. Someone had failed to notify Galion of this and the room was still filled with cheese, a lot of cheese. Most of it had passed beyond inedible decades ago but to a mouse it was a delicacy and Ithil and Anor were soon looking what in geometry is described as an orb and could need some serious dieting.

The salesman had checked them when he put them into the cage but that check had been done in a hurry and the man didn't have quite as good an eyesight as he liked to believe. Anor wasn't a female after all, he was a very virile male and before long Ithil became even fatter than she had been. Mice do breed well, Ithil became the proud mother of thirteen small pups and after a few months she was a grandmother. There was plenty of food, plenty of water running of the wall, no predators…It was a recipe for what a population biologist would refer to as exponential growth. Two became fifteen became seventy four became two hundred and eighteen and so on and so forth. At the end of the year the room was crowded with mice and now the food became sparse. The cheese was devoured and they started seeking better feeding grounds.

It was the cook that discovered the first signs of the impending disaster, he saw some strange black spots on some stew he had left in the pantry over-night and at first he thought it was peppercorns but it soon proved that he was wrong. It was mouse droppings.

In a fit of panic he closed off the pantry and ran to the master of the kitchens, the ellon was a very dignified elf who never let his emotions rule him, he listened to the frantic cook with a calm expression and told the ellon to place a few mousetraps here and there. After all, there are bound to be mice where people settle and he was sure that the problem would be easily solved. By the Valar were he wrong. The cook caught two white mice that day and thought that it was over, done with, the end of the infestation. It was like trying to stop a volcanic eruption with a spoon and a towel. The mice had found the way to the pantry now and the next morning when the kitchen maidens were to open the pantry to prepare the food for the breakfast they were facing an impossible sight. The room was teeming with mice, small white ones with glowing red eyes and they were everywhere, some had even managed to drown in the jugs of milk standing on the shelves. There were mice in the flour, in the potato sacks, in the sacks of nuts and dried fruit. Mice had gotten drunk from licking up the spillage from the mead barrels and mice had found their way up onto every shelf in the room. It looked a bit as if it had snowed in the room, rather heavily and that snow was moving and squeaking and naturally the kitchen maidens got the shock of that age.

The cook and the other workers there armed themselves with broomsticks and hammers and everything else that could be used as a weapon but the door was left open and now the mice saw an opportunity to really start discovering new ground. It was an exodus of mice and they just kept coming. At the end of the day there wasn't a room that wasn't feeling the effect of this invasion. There were mice in the linen closets, mice in the stables, mice in the armory. They ate everything they could get their sharp teeth into, even the leather of the horses tacks. They ate cloth, they ate wood, some unfortunate elves woke up from their slumber discovering that mice had gnawed of locks of their hair just to make nests.

The palace went into a state of complete chaos, there were mice swimming in the baths, some came crawling out of the privies and the horrors that invoked were worse than what a full on orc attack could have caused. Thranduil found mice gnawing at his favorite robes, some had destroyed his crown since they were eying the berries attached to the thin branches and when he lifted the lid of a bowl of stew to have dinner he found not food but three stuffed mice. Legolas was at first thrilled, he had gotten his pets back! Then he got confused for these mice didn't want him to pet them, one of them actually bit him when he tried to pick it up and there were just too many of them. It wasn't cute anymore, it was frightening. The mice looked like small ghosts and the sounds they made were scary too, a high pitched squealing that hurt the sensitive elven ears. And the smell! The entire palace soon reeked of mouse and Thranduil was aghast when he tried to get to bed and found five litters of mice, freshly born, underneath his covers. He started to fear that the goddamn mice would manage to do what the orcs hadn't, force them to abandon their home.

The horses were getting skittish due to the mice scurrying around their legs, the hens stopped laying and the dogs tried to kill mice but the small rascals were too many and too swift. The elves were in despair. The mice did what all living creatures do, they defecate and everything was covered with droppings. The healers were fuming because of the lack of hygiene in the healing ward and many got sick to their stomach because of the contaminations. They had to get water from outside of the palace and Thranduil ordered half of the army to go mouse hunting. He armed the warriors with clubs and it became one bloody and terrible mess but there was no end to the mice. They just kept coming and the elves tried to exterminate them by going through the entire palace room after room but to no prevail. There were too many crevices and cracks in the rock in which the mice could hide.

Then one evening Aiwendil the brown wizard arrived. Thranduil had sent a message to him and the wizard had never heard of anything like that before. The infestation was horrible, traps, poison or dogs didn't change anything, they were too many. Ithil and Anor had indeed followed the scripture and become plentiful and they obviously had managed to transfer their fertility and libido to all of their descendants. The elves had tried to remove everything edible to starve the mice but not even that had worked, and now the mice became desperate and got aggressive. Some elflings had gotten bitten and a babe had been attacked while in the crib and got badly hurt so they had to do something and they had to do it fast.

Aiwendil was in shock, he had never witnessed anything like that and he was at first a bit scared that he wouldn't be able to do anything about this menace, then he got an idea. He had one of the carpenters summoned to his chamber and gave the man some very strict instructions. The morning after the wizard went into the courtyard and with him he brought a flute. It didn't look much like other musical instruments though, it wasn't straight but bent and it looked more like a branch than a flute but it had holes in it and the weird looking wizard started playing it. The sound was awful, it sounded as if some tiny thing was being tortured in the moist horrific ways and the elves had to plug their ears but to the mice this was obviously the equivalent of a lovely aria. They gathered around the wizard and it looked like a river of white bodies.

The elves stood there awestruck as the wizard started to walk out of the palace and the mice followed him, like they were tied to him by a leash. A sea of white came after the wizard and Thranduil waved him goodbye and thought good riddance. He had given the ishtari clear instructions regarding where he was to go with these pests. Soon there were just a few mice left and they were not such a great problem.

Thranduil grasped two of his guards, gave them a pouch of gold and the order to go and buy as many cats as possible and they gladly obeyed. The king had just said cats, it didn't matter what sort of cats it was as long as they caught mice, tomcats, bobcats, whatever. So they returned with everything from skinny feral creatures who hissed and spat even at elves to groomed and shiny ones with a pedigree and all. And the reign of mice thus ended and peace was restored to the realm, or perhaps not.

A few months later they did notice that the orc no longer attacked so often and the groups were smaller, the forces of Dol Guldur were obviously occupied doing something else than fighting the elves. Rumors said that there was some sort of infestation problem and that the orcs all stayed near the privies due to diarrhea and vomiting. And many a spider's nest were found completely ruined by rodents, not a single egg was left alive.

Legolas got a cat of his own, he named it Sassy and it spent every night in his room and he was very fond of it. One morning when Thranduil came to bid his son good morning he was met with a beaming Legolas and a very proud and protective mother with six little ones. "Look Ada, I have gotten kittens!"

Thranduil had to turn around, do a facepalm and send a short prayer to Eru. "Dear lord, not again!"

But cats do after all not breed quite as fast as mice and they were both needed and useful and so the cats stayed. And even Thranduil found it soothing to sit there on his throne with a purring feline on his lap.


	2. A whole lotta scratchin' goin on

Mice and lice are not nice

Chapter two: A whole lotta scratchin' goin on

The storm had hit out of nowhere, the weather had been nice for weeks and very few could remember a summer quite as sunny and pleasant as this one. The forest was quiet in the heat of the sun and very little happened. A delegation of elves from Mirkwood had been sent out to visit Imladris and they had been rather close when the storm hit, and it hit hard. It went from a few dark clouds to complete mayhem within an hour and the group had been forced to seek shelter in a human village not very far from Imladris. It was simply dangerous to remain outdoors since lightning bolts shot through the air accompanied by branches and all sorts of debris. The elves had found an inn in the village, it was rather large and it had a good reputation, a major trading route went through that particular village and so the place saw a lot of strangers. They were rather used to having elven guest and the innkeeper greeted the elves with a lot of courtesy and respect although he had to admit to himself that he never had seen such a sorry bunch of first born.

Normally elves are very well groomed and they look pristine and perfect, these looked like half drowned cats. They were soaking wet and even their horses looked extremely irritated. The innkeeper was glad they had at least some rooms available, a whole bunch of rangers had also arrived that evening and the inn was rather crowded but the best rooms were still not occupied, they were rather expensive. So the innkeeper managed to squeeze ten elves into four rooms and the servants were scurrying around like mice, finding spare beds and heating water and trying to make life a bit more comfortable for the drenched elves. The weather outside was just awful and the wind was tearing at the roof and the chimney, some of the locals had also come to the inn since it was the most solid building of the village and they believed themselves to be safe there. The elves were in the process of getting their wet clothes off and getting new and dry ones on when the door to the inn once more got kicked open and a new group entered, the innkeeper was a bit in shock for you hardly ever saw dwarves in this area but here they were, about twenty in total, fifteen males and five females and they too were soaking wet and rather miserable.

The innkeeper knew that elves and dwarves are unable to mingle in a very civilized manner, it was like putting cats and dogs into the same pen so he had quite a problem to solve. He couldn't tell anyone to leave, the weather outside was just too dangerous and he needed the money. He decided that he could place the dwarves in the servant's quarters and in the dining hall and his wife was wringing her hands in despair. They didn't have enough blankets for everybody, and it would get uncomfortable beyond any doubt. But if the elves stayed in the good rooms and the dwarves stayed in the dining hall things would turn out alright, or so she hoped.

They had enough food and the weather couldn't last that long now could it? But there had to be some extra bedding to be found for the guests could not be told to sleep straight on the floor, the innkeeper's wife got an idea, she sent one of the kitchen boys over to the village tailor and got some cloth there, and the blacksmith had a lot of horse blankets and some of the other wives in the village also donated whatever extra blankets they had, and so nobody would at least freeze.

The blankets were distributed, they smelled of horse and sheep and worse things too but beggars cannot afford to be choosers right? The elves were mumbling a bit with clenched teeth but they did understand the situation. The innkeeper did split the dining hall in two with a portable screen and let the elves eat on one side of it and the dwarves on the other. For the moment they all were too miserable to start any form of trouble, they just sat there and ate their warm stew listening to the storm outside and perhaps thanking the gods for this warm and safe place.

The elves were not just anybody, they were carrying a very important message from the king and among them were the kings trusted butler Galion and even his son, although in disguise. The young ellon was heading to Imladris to see some more of the famous valley and to deliver some ancient scrolls from the kings library which Elrond's librarian had requested and he was very excited about the opportunity to see more of the world. He hadn't anticipated this though and he sat there wide eyed and almost drank in all the new impressions. The inn was cozy but it did smell odd and there were so many things of which he was curious. Galion sat there nibbling at some bread and he looked as if he was afraid that it would come to life and bite him, he didn't trust humans more than he would trust dwarves and now they were stuck there with twenty of the short hairy creatures.

Legolas were unaccustomed to dwarves, he only knew that his father hated them like the plague itself and that they were greedy, smelly and rather devoid of anything even resembling good manners. He was curious though and the young prince had gotten the shock of a decade when he realized that some of the dwarves were in fact female. But they had beards! He started to believe that his father was right when he claimed that dwarves were something that hadn't been planned at all, they couldn't be a part of Illuvatars great music. The dwarves had gotten the warmth back in their stocky bodies, they had food and they had ale and the atmosphere soon became rather jolly. Some were singing and as dwarves do when they appreciate the meal they started tossing food around.

The elves sat behind the screen and felt shocked and a bit disgusted by what they heard and the dwarves of course knew that there were elves present and didn't do anything to hide their feelings regarding the first born. Before long subtle insults were being flung around and the innkeeper found it a bit worrying so he got one of his servants to start playing the violin to drown the voices with music. It didn't do much though, the dwarves were still being rather rambunctious and so the innkeeper managed to convince the elves of the wisdom of returning to the rooms. He didn't want any trouble there and he knew that the group of rangers were too few to be able to stop a fight if it was to occur. The dwarves managed to turn the whole hall into a war zone before the night and the innkeeper sighed and knew it would take days to clean the mess up. There wasn't a square inch of the room that wasn't covered in grease and food stains.

The dwarves went to sleep and peace fell, or at least it tried to fall. The sounds of the storm were terrifying and the innkeeper just prayed that the roof didn't give in. The walls were creaking and groaning and the wind howled through the chimney. It sounded like some wailing beast of some sort. Legolas lay awake in his bedroll and listened to it, he was a bit worried too. He hadn't experienced a storm while staying in a human settlement before and he wasn't so sure about the strength of the building. Galion seemed calm enough and after a while the young elf managed to fall asleep.

The next morning the storm was still raging and the streets were transformed to rivers and the rivers into raging floods. It was pouring down and it didn't seem to stop anytime soon. The innkeeper had never seen such terrible weather and he was afraid this was the end of the world or something. Humans were superstitious and he was no exception from that rule. The day was dark and everybody had to stay indoors. The rangers and the elves did pass the time by playing cards and the dwarves stayed near the hearth and told each other stories. The mood was rather relaxed and pleasant and the innkeeper was glad.

He made sure that the elves got their meals served in the rooms they had gotten and the dwarves did yet again turn the dinner into a foodfight. The innkeeper did the mistake of serving mead to the food and if dwarves are a bit naughty while sober getting drunk do quadruple that trait. They were singing songs so bawdy and rude the innkeeper forbade his wife from entering the room and he told the servant maidens to stay away from the dining hall until the next day. The elves had gotten some wine, he didn't have much of the stuff and it wasn't really good wine but it was all that he could offer.

It continued to rain for three whole days, like the skies were mourning and there were water everywhere. The guests had gotten bored by now and they had fallen into a rather grumpy mood, the dwarves were no longer using subtle insults towards the elves, now they were shouting some rather nasty ones. The elves claimed that there were no real females among the dwarves since everybody had beards and the dwarves in return claimed that the elves all were womenfolk since there wasn't a beard to be seen among them. The atmosphere was getting a bit heated and it didn't get any better when one of the dwarf women promptly pulled the hem of her dress down just to show them that she indeed was female.

The sight made the elves turn both red and pale and the dwarves were laughing so hard they almost fell of their chairs, claiming that the elves were to thin blooded to really appreciate the sight of a decent bosom. One of the warriors was almost on the verge of dropping his pants just to let the dwarves see that they indeed were male. Galion stopped him though and the elves retreated to their rooms, praying that the awful rain soon would end. They sought refuge in the realm of elven dreams and the dwarves played dice and were making a lot of noise. The human rangers were a silent and disciplined bunch but this was almost too much for them. They wished that they could bind and gag the dwarves but that would have caused a diplomatic crisis and so they just tried to endure.

The next morning things took a turn for the worse, it was one of the rangers who felt a peculiar itch and scratched his scalp vigorously. The others laughed at him and claimed that he had forgotten that you in fact can bathe in water and not just drink it and the man just grunted and grinned. But later that day also some of the others started itching and a couple of the elves itched too. At the end of the day also some dwarves complained about an itch and the innkeeper's wife got a fine toothed comb and checked the ranger's hair. It was lice and not just a few, the moist warmth of the inn had obviously benefited the insects and heaven knew where they had come from but it was probably from some of the blankets.

All hell broke loose, the elves were panicking and accusing the dwarves of having infected them with the pest and the dwarves blamed the elves and the rangers blamed the inn, it was chaos. Elves are terrified of lice and fleas, after all, with all that long flowing hair it is easy to imagine the horror of getting infected, all the combing and washing and medicine needed. To a dwarf it is even worse, they are very hairy and the hairs are thick and coarse. Accusations and curses were flying through the air while a whole lot of scratching was going on and it soon became apparent that the lice had spread through the entire inn. Everybody had them to some degree and the inn keeper's wife was in tears. It was such a shame and she was ready to just lay down and die from it, she was a very proper lady and the knowledge that people had attracted lice in her home was beyond terrible.

It was one of the rangers who managed to calm the temperamental dwarves and elves, he just said that they had lice, fine, they had to deal with it. They were all in the same boat and neither of them could be blamed for the fact that the blankets they had slept in were infected with the pesky insects. The innkeeper's wife knew of a pharmacist in the village and one of the kitchen boys went to retrieve some ointment and he returned with some vials of herbal wash that should fix the problem. The innkeeper did open the bath and so the room was suddenly crowded by more than fifty persons of various size. The dwarf females were given a separate room in which to wash and bathe, the males were not so fortunate and so there was an extremely awkward silence within the huge stone room.

Everybody had to cover their hair with the ointment and it wasn't just the hair upon their head. No, it meant all the hair on their bodies and to the elves that wasn't so bad. After all, elves are not very hairy, except from the hair on their heads they have just a little pubic hair in the groin area and the rest of their skin is as smooth as a baby's bottom. The rangers were a bit worse off, humans are very hairy compared with elves and then it was the dwarves. To them lush hair growth is a sign of power and masculinity and a couple of the dwarves looked a bit as if they had fur.

Legolas was aghast, the idea of having lice had at first almost made him catatonic with shock and then he felt his skin crawling with disgust, it was the most terrifying thing ever. He didn't mind fighting an army of orcs on his own, but this was just too much. Galion had to work rather hard to calm him down, after all the prince was still rather young and inexperienced and to him this was beyond awful.

The sight of the naked men and dwarves was traumatizing and he just sat there staring at the wall while Galion rubbed the terribly smelly ointment into his hair, he just prayed that it would work. The bath became a stinky place and the elves men and dwarves sat there wrapped in towels and looked miserable. Nobody had the energy to mock the others now, they all had more than enough with sulking and the dwarf women were crying. To them getting lice was an awful shame and one they probably never would be able to forget.

After some hours the ointment had to be washed out and the innkeeper had to work like a madman to warm enough water. In the end they all gave a damn whether or not the water was warm, they just wanted to get the goo out of their hair. There were some arguments of who was to wash themselves first, but the innkeeper did take the lead and he ordered that the elves washed themselves first, after all, they didn't have that much hair to wash. Then the rangers rinsed the medicine out of their hair and the dwarves were last.

Then all they could do was wait, wait and see if the medicine had done what it promised to do. The inn keepers wife had replaced the blankets with sheets and so many had a very cold night and when the grey light of dusk entered the inn the truth was revealed. The medicine hadn't worked at all. They all had lice still and the insects were as vigorous as before and everybody was itching like mad. The next step was obvious, combing the lice out of the hair. The innkeeper's wife got several lice combs from the other women in the village and they all went to work. Now the elves did suffer because the ointment had made their hair very static and caused countless tangles. There was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth and Legolas sat there and let Galion comb through his hair while he tried not to yell out in pain.

The humans and the dwarves had more ground to cover so to speak, the body hair had to be checked too and it was a peculiar sight indeed. It was weird but nobody were trying to insult the other races present now, they had more than enough with their own despair and fear. The combing didn't work, they didn't manage to get rid of all the lice like that and so the next step was removing hair. That caused an uproar among the dwarves, but alas, that didn't work. They had to do it, and razors were found and sharpened. Even the elves had to shave down there and there were some rather nervous expressions to be seen. Now there were a lot of males sitting there covered in shaving foam from head to toes and it was a most peculiar sight. The innkeeper's wife was scurrying around blushing like a maiden on her wedding night and the sight probably added years to her life. There were an unholy lot of very well shaped menfolk present and she was secretly enjoying herself a lot but her husband would never have guessed that.

The shaving did help a little, but the lice weren't to be vanquished so easily, they returned with a vengeance and fought the attempts at eradication with a determination that would have made Sauron green with envy. The itching didn't stop either and the elves were a miserable sight, they hated the idea of parasites of any sort and for some peculiar reason the lice seemed to like their blood better than that of the dwarves and humans. It could be that fact that elves are prone to enjoy good red wine more often than humans, and dwarves are after all creatures of the earth, perhaps their blood had a certain metallic taste to it the lice didn't really like.

Legolas didn't really believe it when the final solution was presented. A complete shave. For an elf the idea of shaving their heads was outrageous, it was just unthinkable and they all fell eerily silent when the proposition was laid forth. The dwarves almost passed out, to them the idea of losing their beards was worse than the idea of losing their home and family. They refused, and dwarves do know the art of refusing, they are as adamant as the very bones of the earth when their minds are made up. The leader of the rangers sighed and told them with in a calm voice that then they had to return home with lice and most certainly the darn plague would spread and everybody would know who had caused it too.

The choice was theirs, save their beards and spread the lice or sacrifice their pride and save that of others. The rangers didn't hesitate, they accepted their fate with a shrug and helped each other shave, the end result brought the elves to tears and the dwarves to hysterical laughter. The men were used to travelling in the wilds and they were tanned and worn, the sun had kissed their skin until they all looked like leather but their skulls were egg white and so were their chins where the beards had been. It looked downright bizarre and the dwarves very reluctantly agreed, if the humans could do this then they couldn't be any less brave but they shed their tears as their pride and joy were removed by the razors.

Legolas had never seen a beardless dwarf, and he had absolutely not seen one without hair at all. It was a sight to behold and he didn't know of he should be weeping in sympathy or laughing his guts out. They too had that pale white skin where the hair had been and they looked like very sad and grumpy toddlers who hasn't gotten their will. But at least the lice would be gone.

The elves had no beards, but there was no pardon to be found, their long flowing locks could house a lot of lice and so it had to go. Legolas cringed as Galion cut his braid close to the nape of his neck and then started shaving off the rest of it. Some of the warriors started singing a very sorrow filled lament when the deed was done, most of them were crying and there was in fact a bit of sympathy to be seen in the eyes of the dwarves. They of course knew how proud the elves were of their beautiful hair. The innkeeper's wife burned all the hair in the hearth and the stench of burned hair made everybody cringe. Before long the bath was filled with sad songs, wailing and tears and it had become a very somber place.

The dwarves and the elves ate side by side that evening, nobody tossed food or made fun of each other and everybody wore their cloaks with the hoods pulled up. The dwarf females were just as stricken as the males and tears were running all the time. The bedding and their clothes had been boiled a few times to remove all the lice and some had found out that the clothes they got back were fitting for a hobbit, not a grown ellon.

The next day the storm had passed, the roaring rivers returned to normal and the travelers could each and every go their own not so merry way. The elves did bid the dwarves farewell in a much more polite way than ever before and the rangers felt that this perhaps hadn't been too bad after all. Nobody had gotten killed, and just their pride had been injured. The hair would grow back in time and the idea of them having spent several days in an inn with both elves and dwarves without casualties was amazing.

The elven group arrived in Imladris two days later, they were greeted by Elrond who didn't understand why they didn't remove their hoods until they were inside. When he saw their shaved heads he burst into an involuntary fit of laughter before he expressed his heartfelt sympathy, still giggling like mad. He hadn't laughed like that for an entire age and it made his stomach ache. It took ten minutes before the entire valley knew the sad tale of the inn and the lice and the dwarves and Legolas insisted on keeping his hood up during the entire stay.

When he returned to his father's palace he had already grown some soft stubble which resembled velvet to a touch and the king almost lost it when he saw that both his son, his butler and his most trusted guards returned almost bald. He wept for the loss of his son's beautiful long hair but that didn't stop him from ordering that everything they had been wearing or bringing along during their trip was to be washed, washed again and then boiled just to make sure that no lice had hitched a ride back to the palace. The only good thing that came from the incident was that Legolas didn't find dwarves quite as repulsive as his father did and he had a lot of fun over the next weeks pretending to be scratching an itch and then watching his father go pale and run like his robes were on fire, looking for a fine toothed comb.


End file.
